A 35-year-old per­former as­so­ci­at­ed with the lo­cal “Trini­bad” mu­sic scene is ex­pect­ed to ap­pear in court fol­low­ing his ar­rest in con­nec­tion with a se­ries of vi­ral videos that al­leged­ly fea­tured threats of vi­o­lence aimed at in­di­vid­u­als be­lieved to sup­port a par­tic­u­lar po­lit­i­cal par­ty.

The TTPS said Bradlee Dha­naram of Agapi­to Trace, San­ta Flo­ra, was ar­rest­ed on Fri­day dur­ing an in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tion in the Pe­nal Dis­trict. The ex­er­cise was con­duct­ed by of­fi­cers at­tached to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Unit.

Fol­low­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion and an in­ter­view with Dha­naram, the case was re­viewed by the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, Roger Gas­pard. On Mon­day, le­gal ad­vice was giv­en to for­mal­ly charge Dha­naram un­der Reg­u­la­tion 12(a) of the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions, as out­lined in Le­gal No­tice No. 240 is­sued un­der the cur­rent State of Emer­gency.

The charge, “mak­ing state­ments to in­flu­ence pub­lic opin­ion in a man­ner like­ly to be prej­u­di­cial to pub­lic safe­ty,” stems from the con­tent of the videos, which cir­cu­lat­ed wide­ly on so­cial me­dia plat­forms.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice re­mind­ed the pub­lic that any act — ver­bal, writ­ten or oth­er­wise — that in­cites vi­o­lence or spreads pan­ic, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the lead-up to the April 28 gen­er­al elec­tion, will be pros­e­cut­ed to the fullest ex­tent of the law.